


Decrease: Double Decrease, or: Knitting Gothic

by karanguni



Category: Knitting (Anthropomorphic)
Genre: Accidentally RPG, Crack, Dungeons & Dragons References, Gen, Knitting, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-23
Updated: 2020-12-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:08:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28253676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karanguni/pseuds/karanguni
Summary: This cautionary tale begins with a Pattern, and a Patternmaker.
Comments: 28
Kudos: 112
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Decrease: Double Decrease, or: Knitting Gothic

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Measured_Words](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Measured_Words/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide! 8D May all your knits be swift and easily blocked!
> 
> Many thanks to lovepeaceohana for the beta.

This cautionary tale begins with a Pattern, and a Patternmaker.

Perhaps you come into this story an experienced adventurer; perhaps you have been lured in, fresh blood. One way or another, it is nearly certain you have been tempted down this path by a posting on the Great Bulletin Board in the land of Ravelry, wooed into overestimating your skills and underestimating your finances by illustrations of beautiful scarves, delicate shawls, wondrously well-shaped raglan shoulders.

It is too late to turn back. You have already travelled to the Patternmaker, and – for good or for ill – added the Pattern to your inventory. Whether or not you are sufficiently equipped for this venture, only the brief line notes say. You ignored those line notes in favour of whispering to yourself, _I have the perfect yarn match in my stash for this._

It matters not if you do not possess a stash. You will. This is the way.

And so, be this your first knit or your fiftieth, you open the Pattern and read the words of the Patternmaker. You eagerly anticipate the Mapped Chart that will undoubtedly be contained within, there to light your way as you traverse down the rows.

You are disappointed. There is no Chart, only words. The size of the writing is very small. Your Printing Imp, coincidentally, has run out of ink.

It takes you half a day to bind the Pattern up into your spellbook. This is when you discover that you haven't got half of the required components: the Patternmaker wishes not for your No. 4 twelve-inch circulars, but rather the Imperial No 3. thirty centimetre circulars, which you vaguely recall were only ever produced in an Empire not your own.

You travel to your Local Yarn Seller. This journey is perilous, doubly so if you haven't the experience to ward off the seller's charms. And charm you they will, make no mistake: no matter how much you think of your self-discipline, it is a fact that all LYSes (as those who are Initiated call them) have as basic cantrips spells which they can cast, over and over again, to confound and bewilder you. It does not matter that there are only three aisles in the seller's small shop. You have already walked them twelve times in either direction.

In a dark corner, you find the Imperial No. 3s. Painstaking research into musty tomes of conversion has informed you that they are but fractionally different from the No. 4s which you know and already possess, but you think it is not worth taking risks when slaying dragons. Wait – patterns, you mean patterns.

You place it in your basket.

Now you are confronted with the fact that the Patternmaker has, in their infinite wisdom, dictated unto you that this Pattern _shall_ be knit with double-ply worsted non-superwash merino that has been Fairly Traded.

Perhaps it was not quite a dictum and more just a suggestion, but the illustrations – nay, the _illuminations_ – in the Pattern indicated to you that surely you must use at least a similar – if not identical! - yarn should you wish to succeed in your quest.

 _You have a stash,_ your conscience informs you.

 _No,_ you tell it in turn. _Every new pattern is a new beginning, and therefore I am always a Beginner. Initiates have no stashes. It is known._

It is known.

You pick up four skeins of beautiful yarn similar-enough-or-perhaps-identical to the one suggested – nay, demanded – by the Pattern. You do not, being made not of gold pieces, have a Clockwork Yarn Swift in your own domicile. You wait in the LYS's domain for twenty minutes while they wind the skeins into perfect balls for you. The LYS speaks with you the entire time, probably reinforcing the warp and weft of whatever spell they'd cast on you the moment you'd stepped foot in their store an hour and an aeon ago.

You leave the LYS eventually. (But do you ever _truly_ leave?)

Laden with goods and as ready, as they say, as you will ever be, you crack open your spellbook upon your return home and begin the invocation for the Pattern.

 _Cast on fifty-two stitches,_ reads the first line.

Well, perhaps not the first line. The first line, quite a few inscriptions earlier, commanded you To Swatch. You have always received commandments To Swatch; you have also nearly always ignored them. How could you ever go astray if you are knitting with the One True Needle and the One True Yarn, just as the Pattern says? It would be absolute folly to think that your two hands might knit any differently than the Patternmaker's, that the twin demons of Tension and Knitting Style might alter your results. Those instructions surely only exist as a way for Patternmakers to collude with LYS wizards to sell additional (exorbitantly expensive) skeins of yarn such that fools less world-wise than you waste their time and energy knitting test squares to gauge their mettle against the Patternmakers.

You shall not be fooled. In any case, this is a shawl, and therefore Has No Gauge. What is the worst that could happen? There is no possible way that a mere shawl could turn out too small to fit over your shoulders, or so large that it might as well be a tablecloth. Madness.

Onwards. You cast on fifty-two stitches. You know this, because you had to count them five times. One of the beings who shares the house with you interrupted you by chanting "five, seven, eight, ten" at one point; you have turned said housemate into a newt.

The foundation rows of the Pattern are knit without issue. The glide of the Extremely Expensive Yarn in your hands is a thing of beauty, as will the shawl you eventually craft with these same two hands. Being a cautious and diligent Knitter, you have even attached a stitch maker to the front of the work, such that you will never be confused between Right and Wrong.

For a while, all is well. You make great strides in your first hour, and already your head is full of thoughts of wearing the shawl to ward off the chill of this cold winter. Your needles click and they clack; the piece grows longer as you meet and defeat increases, meet and defeat increases, meet and defeat increases, _meet and defeat increases._

You increase both sides of this Damnable Pattern so many times you nearly lose count.

No. You actually do lose count.

It is day ten of your quest, and you think you have finally reached the point in the Pattern where you shall make this triangular shawl smaller again. Praise be! You were getting bored, and boredom is the province of dropped stitches. You have not dropped any yet. You think.

The Pattern, though it be all in words, nevertheless helpfully provides that you ought have 288 stitches on your needles before beginning The Descent. Wait, no, not the Descent – the Decrease. Yes.

One, two, three...

The other remaining being who shares your house asks you if you wish to go to the Grocery Merchant with them just as you hit two hundred and seventy-six. You turn them into a newt also.

You do have 288 stitches, as it turns out. Miracles do happen. You decide to have mercy on the house being; you could do with a victory snack.

Upon your return from the Grocery Merchant, you read the next section of the Pattern spell with great interest. Now is your hour: the end draws nigh from here the high halfway point.

Horror stops you in your stitches.

 _k3togtbl_. _k3togtbl_ for every row until The End.

 _Bl--y h--l s-n o- a b----! Ph'-- mg--- Cthu-- r-- w-- f-!_ you swear. Invectives help beat back the fear. How can this be happening? This is a mere shawl – you weren't supposed to be working this sort of black magic!

But no matter how many times you read it, the Pattern says only what the Patternmaker has made it say: knit three together through (the ****!) back loop, and do it over and over and _over_ again at the start of the row for _every_ row from here on until Infinity.

Why has the Patternmaker done this to you? Why have they summoned their Devil Lieutenant, this here _k3togtbl_ , to mock you? Why is there a need for a double decrease in this civilised age?

You should have seen it coming, something in you says. There were three-stitch increases at the start of the pattern: as Alpha, so Omega. You _knew_ it was coming; you simply _hoped_ it would not.

Nevermind that. It doesn't matter whether you Did or Did Not know, just as it doesn't matter that you could, had you wished, have looked at the Tags on the Pattern's Bulletin when you visited the land of Ravelry. Even if the Tags had managed to forewarn you of this coming trial, you would have ignored them. The illustrations would have commanded you to forget.

So here you are now, with your needles in hand and nowhere else to go but onwards. Why will a simple k3tog not work? you wonder to yourself. Surely it can. Surely it must!

You open your musty tomes once more in search of answers. Something, anything to dispel the dread curse of _k3togtbl_ and the injury it will bring to your hands. It does not matter if you knit Imperial: your right hand will suffer. It does not matter if you knit Continental: your left hand will suffer. Both hands will suffer; needles are dual-wield weapons. The tips of your fingers will callus and then bleed as you engage in the repetitive act of shoving your needle Places Where It Ought Not Go and forcing it through with your fingertip the way your Teachers always said you ought never do.

The tomes tell you many things. They tell you things you may or may not understand: _k3togtbl_ shall Twist the stitches while _k3tog_ shall not. This shall affect the texture of your piece, they warn you, but the extent will depend on the Nature of your Yarn.

All you know of your Yarn is that it is expensive, and beautiful, and hard to _k3togtbl_ with. You haven't got any mastery in Knot Theory, much less Knitting Topology.

The tomes suggest that it might _just_ be possible for you to _skp-k2tog-psso_ instead. You try to mouth this acronym under your breath and nearly hex yourself. Even when decoded from the Ancient Language into the more understandable jargon of slip-1-purlwise, knit-2-together, pass-slipped-stitch-over, it makes you quake. Which is the lesser of two evils - thrusting your weapon through the back loop thrice, or passing stitches hither and yon only to risk forgetting to do so in a late-night stupor?

Truly you are trapped between the devil and the deep blue stitch.

You hesitate, but you know what it is that you must do. The Illustrations were made with _k3togtbl_ ; only with that stitch can your own Shawl thus be similarly made. You have purchased the Pattern; you have Acquired the Yarn; you have knit it all already halfway.

The last of your house-sharing fellows stops to ask you what is wrong. You seem distraught, they say. Is there anything they can do to help?

Yes, you say, grim but determined. Prepare me a healing potion.

A what? they ask, confused – they know naught of the realm of knitting, being more inclined to silliness involving Dungeons and perhaps even Dragons.

'You could make me an Irish coffee,' you sigh, accepting your reality. 'Go heavy on the Bailey's.'


End file.
